


Look Out

by Nepetas_Apprentice



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, It's all angst, M/M, i have no self control im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 02:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8471485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nepetas_Apprentice/pseuds/Nepetas_Apprentice
Summary: Paul falls in battle.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry. If it makes you feel any better I hate me too.
> 
> This fic was originally posted on my tumblr, [spicedchocolate](spicedchocolate.tumblr.com).

Paul hissed as he lost his balance and fell back, ruining his perfect shot as he tumbled into the mud. He had just managed to get the sniper in his sights when he fell, and now he knew it would take him at least another minute to line it up again, if the person didn’t move at all while he was repositioning himself. Those precious seconds he had lost were not his to spare, as now the burden would fall to Patryk to keep them covered while Paul found his target again, and he was already in enough danger as it was, taking aim at the nearer enemies while a hail of gunfire continued on all sides of them. He needed a chance to take cover as soon as possible, before the sheer number of combatants managed to overwhelm him, and that could only happen once Paul took out the sniper on top of the hill.

Paul tried to stand, ready to jump into action and put an end to this fight, when his stomach muscles clenched so painfully he let out a gasp. He looked down, saw the dark red stain forming on his uniform, and at last realized he had been shot.

It was hard to comprehend at first, even as he watched the blood bubble up from the wound, spilling down onto the ground as it spread. The smell hit his nose then, thick and metallic, and that was when the pain started in earnest.

It ripped through him, starting in his core and radiating through his body, out to the very tips of his fingers. Like the blood, it seemed to spill out of his abdomen, and he was so in awe of the severity of it that he could not scream but instead writhed silently on the ground, his mind racing into a panic as it tried to understand what was happening to his body.

The bullet had torn open a major artery. That much he knew from sitting beside field medics while they tended the dying, that most of the blood in his body was about to come spilling out of him as his heart raced to make up for the rapid drop in blood pressure. As the volume of blood in him lessened, it would get harder and harder for his heart to keep pumping it, until at last it was too weak to keep pushing throughout. At that point, his brain would be deprived of oxygen, and he would die.

He was going to die. The words repeated themselves in his brain over and over, no matter how little he wanted to think about it. Every thought, memory, and emotion he’d ever had would be wiped away, and he wouldn’t even care anymore because he wouldn’t exist. Everything in his life had been leading up to this moment, and in another few minutes none of it would matter, several decades of experiences washed away like water down the drain. Gone, forever.

Paul grimaced as the pain continued to explode out through his body. He was dying, and there was nothing he could do about it.

As his head lolled back in agony, he caught sight of Patryk, still blasting away at the enemy lines, oblivious to what had happened behind him. Paul wanted to reach out and beg for some comfort in his final moments, but as he considered it his brain supplied him with a terrible image: Patryk, whipping around at the sound of his boyfriend’s voice, crying out and dropping his gun as he ran forward. The first, maybe second shots would miss him, but the third would catch him in the back of the head and he would fall, tumbling to the ground while Paul cried out, and he would find himself in a puddle of blood twice the size of what it should have been.

Patryk had to survive. Nothing else mattered nearly so much. There was so much that he had needed to say before his final moments, but the importance of those words paled in comparison to Patryk getting out of this alive. So Paul stayed silent and waited, praying that Patryk would finish off the enemies in time for one last goodbye.

Tears rolled down his face and he had neither the energy nor the care to stop them. He thought it selfish, but he had always hoped that when this moment came, he would have Patryk by his side, talking him through to the bitter end. Instead, all he heard was the deafening sound of gunfire, although that was starting to fade as he felt parts of his body going numb.

It was strange how a loss of pain could be of so little comfort.

As he lay in the dirt and waited for whatever came next, he watched Patryk, taking in every detail, from the way he flicked his ponytail in between shots to the intense look of concentration as he destroyed the enemy side. Paul could remember when he had first realized he was in love with this man. It had been when they went to the theme park during the brief zombie incident, and he had found himself down within minutes after the nasty blow to his eye. Lying on the floor, he had been vaguely conscious of Patryk continuing the fight alone, the roar that pierced his lips the one sound Paul could hear above the collective moans of the zombies.

Patryk had fallen after several minutes of fighting on his own, but by that point the ferocity was already locked into Paul’s mind, and when they both woke in hospital beds a few days later, each asked immediately if the other was still alive. Being wheeled into Patryk’s hospital room and seeing the man himself, exhausted but still shining like the sun, Paul had never known such a beautiful morning.

There would be no such ending this time around, he realized, as a fresh wave of pain made him grimace. This here was the final scene, some unfamiliar forest on a gray afternoon. The sound of Patryk’s gun was the only thing he could hear anymore, the rest of the world slowly sliding into nothing as he focused all of his energy on remembering this single human being.

He hoped that Patryk knew how much Paul loved him. He wondered then if he had said it enough over the years. If he had made clear every detail of Patryk he adored, from his hair to the way he would sometimes mumble in his sleep to his expression now, intense as he faced down the enemy.

He also wondered what would become of his ring, the one he always left in a box beside his bed but took out to wear when they were alone. Patryk had always done the same, which meant that the only proof they had that either of them were ever worn would be Patryk’s word. Knowing that they had gone through with the thing practically behind Tord’s back, they had just been waiting for the right moment to break the news to him, but now it seemed that none of it mattered anymore. Patryk might still choose to tell someone, but it would no longer be the announcement that they had been planning on.. At least now, it wouldn’t matter if anyone approved or not.

Paul’s face was wet with tears and sweat, while his hands were covered in his own blood. He needed the sound of gunfire to die down, just long enough for him to tell Patryk how much he loved him. He couldn’t leave without having said that.

Still, the fighting went on, and Paul’s body continued to shut down. The muscle spasms weakened as his senses became duller, and his thoughts muddled together until he could no longer remember exactly why they had come to this horrid place to begin with. All of his energy went to focusing on Patryk, but even that he could start slipping away from him, and he desperately clung to his memories even as they started to fade, one by one.

Patryk’s laugh. The freckles he’d had as a child. The amount of work he put into his hair. The way he bit his tongue when he was focused on something. Those sidelong glances he made to Paul when Tord said something insane. His smell. How he would hold Paul close in the night. The sound of his voice when he sang.

His smile.

Paul’s thoughts washed away the details, wearing down the edges until only the basic, vague shapes of his memories remained. He found that the only thing left he was certain of was that he loved this man like no other, and he desperately needed a chance to tell him that before he lost the power forever.

It had only been a few minutes since he fell backwards, but it felt like years when the gunfire finally stopped and silence overtook the world.

Paul cracked open his eyes, not having realized he’d closed them in the first place. He saw Patryk still looking out to the field, gun raised. He was scanning the area but not aiming at any specific point, and Paul knew that his time was here.

“Patryk,” he croaked. He only had breath for one more word, and he struggled to think of something that could fit all of the love he felt, and his apologies for not sticking around to fulfill all of the promises they had made. He needed Patryk to know that he had made Paul the happiest man in the world, and he reached forward to close the impossible gap between them.

Two things happened in that moment. Patryk turned around, and the word sniper flashed through Paul’s mind.

Where once everything in Paul was white-hot, now it turned ice cold as he realized his mistake and instead pointed out, to the field.

“Look out.”

Patryk whipped back around, and the sound of a gunshot jostled Paul so that his eyes shut again, this time without hope of reopening. As he felt the pain fade away and his body start to disappear entirely, he chastised himself for using his last moments so destructively, distracting Patryk in the very moment he needed to focus the most. His last words had not been the ones he had ever planned on and, as the sound of a gunshot played over and over in his head, he realized that he must have wasted them on something he had had no power to stop.

It was a selfish thing, he realized, to hope for forgiveness now, but a dead man could be allowed some selfishness, given that it made no difference one way or the other.

That was his final thought as the darkness overcame him and his mind washed away entirely. And then, from somewhere in the void, or outside of it, or above it, he heard a single voice.

“Paul!”

And that was all.


End file.
